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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28011684">Interview Transcript: Three Jokes About Sex</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/resolute/pseuds/resolute'>resolute</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Always Coming Home - Ursula K. Le Guin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:47:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>828</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28011684</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/resolute/pseuds/resolute</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Humor is challenging for an anthropologist.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide Madness 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Interview Transcript: Three Jokes About Sex</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/gifts">ellen_fremedon</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[Excerpts from interview transcripts. Humor is the hardest thing to identify, in my opinion. When I ask about it, the answers are so bland as to be meaningless. And sex is the second most difficult thing to discuss. Not because people won't talk about it! Rather, they talk too much. Everything can be about sex. but is it? In this specific case? Sometimes a broom is just a broom. Sometimes a broom is a penis, and the bristles are pubic hair, and the hands on the staff are a slow and firm grip on a penis, and it is possible that I have been on assignment too long, and too long alone, and I should really delete this part of the report before I submit it to my advisor.</p><p> </p><p>The Valley people talk about sex <em>all the time</em>.</p><p> </p><p>I digress. Humor. I was talking about humor. Is a thing funny because is compares and contrasts disparate things? Because it pokes holes in accepted wisdom? Because it makes the powerful smaller? Because it brings a bully down? Humor is used by the powerful and the powerless to different ends. And there I go, falling into my preconceived notions! People in the Valley think of power so differently from the way I learned to think about it. I am outside the Valley in all ways. The jokes, they make no sense to me.</p><p> </p><p>But perhaps that is the joke.]</p><p> </p><p>1.</p><p> </p><p>[As told by First Brew, interviewed while walking to the fields]</p><p> </p><p>Some people don't understand what makes a joke. </p><p> </p><p>Buck Ears never did, not even when he was Thistle and we all played together in the hills. We would play ball and stick, and pretend to keep the ball away from each other, and Thistle-as-used-to-be never knew when the pretending stopped being funny. He would keep the ball, and keep it, and hold onto it like some old people hold onto their shit, squeezing like they think it will become precious if they clench tight enough. That was Thistle in games when we were children.</p><p> </p><p>Now that Buck Ears is a man, he still clenches what people ask for. He laughs, like it's funny. He thinks we're all playing. But Buck Ears grew from a skinny twist of a boy who would curl around the ball and scream that it was his. He grew and grew into a giant trunk of a man, a cut rock of a man, and when he holds things -- like Susufin's favorite shirt -- above his head, out of reach, he doesn't understand that he holds all the power in his same hand. Up, out of reach. </p><p> </p><p>He thinks this is a funny joke, but it isn't.</p><p> </p><p>2.</p><p> </p><p>[As told at washing-day in a group conversation. The speaker is Flight]</p><p> </p><p>So Spitting Rain told me, she told me how when she was very young, she used to wag her penis in time to the chanting from the girls' waka, would take hold of it and make it dance to the girls' songs, because if it danced well enough, her penis would be a girl penis. [Laughter]</p><p> </p><p>[Interviewer: Why is that funny?]</p><p> </p><p>Because it's already a woman's penis. It's her penis? You understand? So how could it be a man's penis if it is her penis?</p><p> </p><p>[Interviewer: I'm not sure I understand.]</p><p> </p><p>Listen, your nose is a woman's nose. You are a woman, it is your nose, it is a woman's nose. I am a man. My nose is a man's nose, because it is mine. [long sigh] It's a joke because Spitting Rain was so little, she didn't understand this. It's a joke about how young children do not understand obvious things.</p><p> </p><p>[Interviewer: Like anthropologists?]</p><p> </p><p>Yes, like anthropologists also do not understand obvious jokes. Exactly.</p><p> </p><p>3.</p><p> </p><p>[working song, translated by Junco]</p><p> </p><p>In I go, just the tip, just the tip</p><p>Out I go, slowly, slowly</p><p>In I go, deeper, deeper</p><p>Out I go, faster, faster</p><p>Now I press, circling, circling</p><p>Pushing hard, poking -</p>
<ul>
<li>through?</li>
</ul><p>That's how the sewing goes!</p><p> </p><p>4.</p><p> </p><p>[A series of poems written on a house wall. While the first is not obviously sexual, the responses indicate that it must have been intended as such.]</p><p> </p><p>What a good cat! A great mouser.</p><p>I would be a cat, sleek and strong.</p><p>I would hunt and seek and play</p><p>All would be unable to look away.</p><p>My strength, my power.</p><p> </p><p>[Response by Cataract]</p><p> </p><p>A hunting cat, a great mouser!</p><p>Always trying, trying to catch</p><p>what cannot be caught</p><p>Or claimed</p><p>Without price.</p><p>What is caught?</p><p>A dead mouse.</p><p> </p><p>[Response by They Dance Slow]</p><p> </p><p>A cat's power is so small</p><p>A worthy goal for a small man</p><p>Tiny victories</p><p>Tiny breath</p><p>Tiny soul!</p><p> </p><p>[Counter reply by the original anonymous author]</p><p> </p><p>Only bulls think bigger is best</p><p>Size is for the dull</p><p>Those with wit</p><p>Use anything to great effect</p><p>She leaves laughing</p><p> </p><p>[The poetry stops at that point. There is one more comment, "But laughing at what?"]</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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